Perspective

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.
David Cronenberg


Relationships are never easy. Especially ones where divorce (yours, theirs, or yours and theirs) is involved. Your future is clouded by the past, and your present seems to exist at the whim of others. You make repairs to your heart and requests for sanity on a daily basis. Simplification and perspective seem to be the key...albeit at this point an almost unattainable key.

Simplification requires change. I know that I cannot change anyone else. I cannot change how others feel, how others react, how others always seem to misunderstand, misrepresent, misuse, and misguide me. But I CAN try to change myself. I can try to get rid of my OWN fears and resentments and how they can cause ME to misunderstand, misrepresent, misuse, and misguide others.

Step number one: The past is the past is the past. I cannot change the past. Therefore, I cannot dwell on the past. (Of course, this is easier said than done!)I need to accept it, reconcile with it, and then move on.

I can’t change the fact that PC was once married to another woman.
I can’t change the fact that PC is loyal to the children they had together.
I can’t change the fact that I have my own issues involving my own children and my own divorce.

I can't change any of these facts...but I can try to change my attitude, how I FEEL about these facts.

Step number two: Control. Someone once accused me of being a control freak. (That someone was of course my ex!) Those who know me well found it highly amusing that anyone would think that of me...someone who is so laidback that they must be made of teflon. Truth is, he may have been right. There are times when I hate being out of control or not being able to control things. Therefore, I need to concentrate on the things that I CAN control...without being that control freak. The past is not under my control, awkward situations and interactions are not under my control, other people are not under my control...as much as I would like them to be sometimes! But I can control myself. I can control how I react to others, to situations, to problems. I can control how I let myself be my own worse enemy...taking on too many things, not taking my meds, procrastinating things, not dealing with my A.D.D. tendencies. And I can control my perspective.

Step number three: Perspective. Keeping it. This will probably be the hardest step for me. I have the tendency to be a perfectionist. Not the I-will-get-it-right-until-it kills-me type of perfectionist, but the I-can-never-get-it-right-so-why-even-bother type. Losing perspective is much too easy for me. It’s almost impossible not to lose sight of what I want when I feel as if I am living in the trenches day to day. There are too many people to please and too many places to fail. And I fail constantly. At those times, my relationships...to PC, my children, my friends and family...become so overwhelming that they feel like a prison. It becomes hard to find a reason to keep fighting the odds, and even harder to believe that I will ever succeed. But it is at those times that it is important for me to get some perspective and regain control (remember step number two?). I cannot let the little things...the hurts, the missteps, the minor tragedies...become full-fledged dramas. Eventually, hopefully, they will all seem like blips on a screen or bumps in the road.

I am sure that, like any recovery, there is a twelve step program in here somewhere. However, I think, at this point, three is more than enough for me to take on.